November 11th, 2007
nVidia is introducing 3-way SLI - that's up to 6 slots space taken.
AMD / ATI introduced CrossFireX - that's up to 8 slots space taken.
Now, I do realize that both of these have tremendous horsepower in them, but at what cost?
No, I'm not talking about powerbills. I'm talking about your PCs functionality.
How many of you have a motherboard with over 6 slots space for add-in cards, let alone 8? I don't, that's for sure.
Let's say I would like to go and get myself 3-way SLI or CrossFire X system - where does AMD and nVidia think I'll put my soundcard to? No, integrated is not enough for me, excluding perhaps ATI's on the gfx cards, but even then that's only for watching videos if I had a amplifier that supported HDMI, which I don't, so it's useless for me. Where do they think I'll put my TV receiver card? And NICs and other possible cards I could have.
Now, by using HD3850's or 8800GT's you could somewhat get by this, since they only have single slot coolers by default, but if I didn't put my computer in a freezer, I'm quite sure 3 tightly packed 8800GT's might actually just start melting through the mobo with all the heat coming from other sources too.
But seriously - both of the platforms sound great, but they forgot one little problem - there's no room for other add-in cards.
We need bigger motherboard, or we need alternative solutions, 3870 X2 is one, of course, but that wouldn't probably fit all the cases (though, it shouldn't be longer than 8800 Ultra so I guess it's still manageable)
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